a love (lust) story told through beautiful fingers & sweat slick palms
by Rusty Halos
Summary: America loved England's hands. They were long fingered and elegant, beautifully shaped and marred with scars, each with a different story. They were a testament, a monument, to all of England's many triumphs and numerous defeats. They told his story more clearly than his unhappy mouth and shuttered eyes and sardonic half-truths ever could. De-anon from the Hetalia Kink Meme.


America loved England's hands. They were long fingered and elegant, beautifully shaped and marred with scars, each with a different story. They were strong, and _old_, a testament, a monument, to all of England's many triumphs and numerous defeats. They told his story more clearly than his unhappy mouth and shuttered eyes and sardonic half-truths ever could.

The first time England ever told America he loved him, Arthur used his hands.

It was just after an argument—a big one, one of those fights where America had to clench his fists to stop from punching through a wall and England's dark eyes said bitterness and neither of them could speak a single civil syllable to each other for days, weeks, on end.

When America had finally caved in—_England always said he was too soft, too childishly attached to equilibrium_—Arthur had only looked at him, weary and a little sad. And then he had raised an open palm to America's face, fingers against cheekbone and the heel of his hand tucked under Alfred's jaw, framing larkspur eyes with steady warmth.

America had immediately known, without words, without conscious thought, that England loved him, in that endless space between seconds he sometimes felt was the only place they could get along. It was all there, written in the way he could feel England's solid pulse so close to his throat, in the way England's fingers touched so gently America felt like spun glass, wafer thin and fragile. Spun glass more precious than all the gold in El Dorado.

The last time England ever denied that there was something there, between them, burning so bright it could blind, it was with his hands.

He had planted them solidly against America's chest, ten fingers spread out as if to maximize impact, maximize damage, and then he had simply _pushed_. America had stumbled back a step, shocked, his mouth hanging open like a loon, because England had literally, physically, shoved him out of Arthur's life, without a word of explanation. It had hurt more than decapitation, disembowelment, strangulation, and a bullet to the kidney combined. America would know. After he'd gathered his wits, Alfred had apologized as best he could, half-hearted and shell shocked, then sprinted towards his hotel room to get so completely wasted on cheap whiskey he'd forgotten his own name.

And then, the morning after, when his head felt like it was about to split open, when everything seemed a degree or two off kilter, like the world was spinning the wrong way round, England had used those hands to steady his shoulders. Those hands had wiped away cold sweat and the remnants of drunken tears, tenderly, carefully. America would never have believed England could change his mind so quickly when he'd ignored Alfred for _centuries_—but those hands—those hands would never lie to him. So America had simply leaned into the touch, soaking up their warm comfort like a flower starved for sunlight.

The third—but most significant—time that America apologized to England for doing something so mindlessly stupid that England had threatened to walk out and never, ever come back, Alfred had apologized with Arthur's hands. Slowly, almost timidly, he had reached out to unclench them from tense fists, spread them so that those thin, strong fingers were flat against Alfred's own hands, filling in those gaps between his digits in a seamless, perfect symphony. The skin on the back of Arthur's hands was translucent, had been velvet soft against Alfred's cheek. He had pressed a kiss to the latticework of barely visible veins, lips as reverent as a supplicant on his knees before a god.

_I'm sorry_, he'd said against those hands. _Please believe me, Arthur._

_Don't leave_.

And those hands had withdrawn, and England's eyes with them, blank and cold like a lake frozen over.

England hadn't forgiven him for a long time, so long America missed his touch like a physical ache, deep down beneath his breastbone. But when he did—with a resigned huff of breath and his brows furrowed in a scowl—England had put clasped both hands above America's elbows, gripping him, shaking him, telling him that under no circumstances was he to be such a goddamned fool ever again.

And America had agreed, cheerfully would have agreed to build his own boat to Hell, if England would only keep his hands there, trembling despite their iron grip, telling Alfred that he had been—resentfully, bitterly—missed.

And the tenth time they had slept together, that time when it was more about hate than love, that time that had convinced America he had to have England, no matter what—that time that had started their insane, agonizing, beautiful rush of a relationship—that time had been all about England's hands.

Arthur had bent him over a solid old desk, a desk that could bear their weight and their frenetic desperate movements, and growled in his ear all those filthy things he wanted to do to Alfred, _would_ do to Alfred, whether or not America wanted them. But America had wanted them, had wanted them like air in his lungs, moaning filthy and loud and broken as England's fingers had slipped inside him, dry and so beautifully agonizing. Two fingers had spread him wide, crooked perfectly against his prostate, opening him up for England's pleasure, for England's heat and England's lust, stretching him to take everything that England would give him. And then a third finger, so tight that America almost yelped with the perfect pain of it, balancing on the knife's edge of pleasure and torture, loving it like that balance gave him purpose. Those fingers had wrecked him, punished him, fucked him until the natural resistance of his body was no more, until his muscles were so pliant and open that England could slide in with only the barest hint of lubrication, breach him with one smooth glide that sent America smashing into the desk, gasping for breath, mindless with lust, with pain, with _satisfaction_.

And then those hands had mapped the muscles of his hips, digging in hard enough to bruise, as England said into America's ear, _You'll take what I give you, Alfred. You'll take everything I give you, _even as those hands had said _Submit, surrender, give me everything that you are so that I may use you, consume you until you are nothing._

And America had nearly sobbed, _Yes_, his words tripping over each other like clumsy besotted fools, drunk on sensation and terror and pure, unadulterated desire.

Afterward, illuminated in the silver of moonlight and the rich gold of the fireplace, England's hands had gentled America's spasming limbs, traced the unconscious grace of the arc of Alfred's back, soothed the expression on his lover's face. And underneath those hands, Alfred had felt warm, sated, adored. Underneath those hands, America had seen an immortal lifetime of possibilities, each one more precious than the next.

* * *

_finis._

* * *

******Author's Note: **This is tantamount to an admission that I'm a little addicted to the APH Kink Meme. WHY IS IT SO FUN? First kink meme de-anon, but more might be coming up, as I've got an on-going fill there. ...Heh.

Originally de-anoned at my LiveJournal (link in profile).


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